Alec Gifford, a born newsman who had been on the local TV-news beat 51 years when he retired from WDSU in December 2006, with a career spanning Hurricanes Betsy and Katrina, and covering countless colorful newsmakers and political scoundrels, has died, WDSU reported late Friday night. He was 85.

“He was an incredible journalist, and a wonderful teacher,” said WDSU anchor Norman Robinson, whom Mr. Gifford, then WVUE’s news director, brought to New Orleans from Mobile, Ala., in 1975. “It was about writing. It was about being aggressive. It was about going to the source of the story, and not being timid about asking questions. That’s what I learned from him.”

Alec Gifford, longtime WVUE reporter and anchor, on March 26, 1969.

Mr. Gifford’s great-grandfather, Numa Dufour, published the French-language newspaper L'Abeille de la Nouvelle-Orleans. His father, Alexander Gifford, was a political reporter for the Times-Picayune whose career advice to his son was, “Don't get into the newspaper business. They don't pay worth a damn."

A Jesuit High School graduate, Mr. Gifford enlisted in the Navy at age 17, then attended college at Johns Hopkins University on the GI Bill. He worked at a radio station in Baltimore, then a Texas radio station owned by future President Lyndon Johnson.

He was hired at WDSU in 1955 by Bill Monroe, the station’s first news director, who went on to become NBC’s Washington bureau chief and moderator of “Meet the Press.”

"He's the kind of guy you meet and decide in four or five minutes that this guy's honest,” Monroe recalled in a 2006 interview. “It took a while but he gradually built a very loyal audience. People realized he's easy to listen to, that he didn't throw away any words."

A New Orleans native, WWL-TV’s Bill Capo came of age watching Mr. Gifford at WDSU’s anchor desk.

“Alec was larger than life,” Capo said. “Over the last 30, 40, 50 years, we’ve had a series of people in public life who are characters -- Edwin Edwards, Harry Lee, Marc Morial, Archbishop Hannan -- and Alec was one. He had a fine sense of talking to people. He knew news was important and that what he was saying mattered to the viewers. It was important to him, and that made it important to you.”

One story from that storm was a live interview Mr. Gifford did with Vic Schiro, then the New Orleans mayor, who was dealing with reports of flooding in many sectors of the city. "Don't believe any false rumors unless you hear them from me," Schiro said. “Followed him to his grave,” Mr. Gifford said many years later.

After working as a WDSU reporter and anchor during that station’s peak years as the dominant local-news provider -- he was the marquee Esso Reporter in those days, seated behind an anchor desk on which the sponsoring gasoline company’s logo was prominently displayed – Mr. Gifford left New Orleans in 1966 for a one-year stretch to work for NBC News in New York.

He returned as news director, anchor and reporter at WVUE, where he worked for 13 years. “Tonight you’re going to hear some good news, and some bad news,” read a “NewsScene 8” slogan from those years. “Wouldn’t you rather hear it from Alec Gifford?” His second stint at WDSU began in 1980 and continued until his retirement.

Mr. Gifford shared an anchor desk with many familiar names from New Orleans television history, Mel Leavitt through Margaret Orr. He also hosted cooking shows a couple of different times. Coworkers from every phase of his career marveled at his work ethic, even into his sixth decade on the job.

“He was ‘on’ 24 hours a day,” said Richard Angelico, a reporter who worked with Gifford at both WVUE and WDSU. “He was a real type-‘A’ newsman. He lived it, ate, dreamed it, and expected everybody else to do the same thing. There was never a reason for not getting the story.”

One of Gifford’s legacies are the many TV news careers he fostered. Robinson’s was one. Capo’s was another. Angelico had a Spanish degree from Loyola University and was working as a longshoreman when Gifford hired him at WVUE. Now an investigator for the Metropolitan Crime Commission, Angelico started as a newscast producer but went on to become “the quintessential investigative reporter,” as Gifford said when Angelico retired from WDSU in 2009.

The Press Club of New Orleans honored Gifford with a ceremony in 2005 to mark his 50th year in TV news.

"I feel like the luckiest guy in the world,” he said a year later, reflecting on his pending retirement. “I never dreamed in December 1955 that this would happen, that I would end up being the senior guy in New Orleans.

"It's been a fabulous career."

Mr. Gifford is survived by his wife, Dolores, sons Nathan Gifford and Russell Gifford, daughters Edie Deegan, Rena Bonin and Elise Gifford, all of New Orleans, 10 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

There will be no funeral. Mr. Gifford’s body will be donated to LSU Health Sciences Center. A reception will be held from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Tuesday (March 26) at 329 Bermuda St. in New Orleans.